Do not open until 2025: Mussolini 'hid secret diaries in Italian hillside but ordered them sealed for 80 years'

Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini hid a set of secret diaries in an Italian hillside and ordered them not to be opened until 2025, the son of the man who buried them has revealed.

Mussolini, who ruled Italy from 1922 until he was executed by partisans in 1945, has long been rumoured to have kept diaries which could detail the extent of his relationship with wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

There is even a theory among some Italian historians that he was executed as part of an MI6 plot to spare Britain embarrassment from revealing the truth about his closeness to Churchill.

Mussolini historian Mariano Vigano, based in Rome, said: ‘They may well be genuine but until they are examined we should be very careful, prudence must prevail until they are verified.

‘There have been claims in the past regrading Mussolini diaries but none have so far proved genuine....